There Are Many Reasons Not To Give The NSA The Power To Spy On Your Info

from the here-are-just-a-few dept

We were just noting that the Senate is undergoing a fight concerning whether or not the Cybersecurity Act is going to go anywhere, with much of the fight being a tug of war over your privacy. Senators Franken, Paul and Schumer are supporting an amendment to add in more privacy protections. Senators McCain and Hutchison are looking to take away privacy protections and give the NSA much more power to violate your privacy and access your private info, with less oversight and without it having anything to do with cybersecurity.

In the 1960’s, a Congressional investigation, led by four-term Senator Frank Church, found that the NSA had engaged in widespread and warrantless spying on Americans citizens. Church was so stunned at what he found, he remarked that the National Security Agency’s "capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, andno American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything." (emphasis added) The investigation led to the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which provided stronger privacy protections for Americans’ communications—that is, until it was weakened by the USA-PATRIOT Act and other reactions to 9/11.

NSA has continued its warrantless wiretapping scandal

In 2005, the New York Times revealed that the NSA set up a massive warrantless wiretapping program shortly after 9/11, in violation of the Fourth Amendment and several federal laws. This was later confirmed by virtually every major media organization in the country. It led to Congressional investigations and several ongoing lawsuits, including EFF’s. Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act to granttelecom companies retroactive immunity for participating in illegal spying and severely weaken privacy safeguards for Americans communicating overseas.Since the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) passed, the NSA has continued collecting emails of Americans. A 2009 New York Times investigation described how a “significant and systemic” practice of "overcollection" of communications resulted in the NSA’s intercepting millions of purely domestic emails and phone calls between Americans. In addition, documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU, although heavily redacted, revealed "that violations [of the FAA and the Constitution] continued to occur on a regular basis through at least March 2010"— the last month anyone has public data for.

NSA recently admitted to violating the Constitution.

Just last week, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence—which oversees the NSA—begrudgingly acknowledged that "on at least one occasion" the secret FISA court "held that some collection… used by the government was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment." Wired called it a "federal sidestep of a major section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act," and it confirmed the many reports over the last few years: the NSA has violated the Constitution.

There are more where that came from. All of these, however, raise serious concerns about why Senators McCain and Huchison seem so eager to allow the NSA to abuse your privacy even more with their amendments. What are they thinking? The EFF has put together an action page asking you to contact your Senators (which you can do via a handy site set up by the American Library Association). The EFF site is also asking people to tweet to their Senators, using the hashtag #defendprivacy and has set up a nice tool to make that easier as well (at the "action page" link above).

In the meantime, we're still waiting for someone (anyone?) to tell us exactly why this bill is needed without resorting to hyperbole about planes falling out of the sky. If there's an existing problem with infosharing, what is it? What law, today, is blocking this kind of infosharing? Until the government can explain that, it seems weird that they're pushing for much greater spying power by the NSA and fewer privacy rights. How can they defend this when they can't even point to what the roadblocks are?

And pls don't try to put the blame on Obama or the Democrats. It's a generalized disease. Your politicians, with very few exceptions, either don't care about your Constitution anymore or are too clueless to see it's being and will be violated through these moronic bills.

Re:

Agreed. What I don't understand is why organizations like the EFF are wasting everybody's time with suggestions of writing/emailing/contacting your senators. The few good ones are already fighting the good fight, and the rest are simply going to do what they need to in order to placate the general public when it becomes necessary.

What these groups really need to be doing is helping to identify and promote viable candidates/parties outside the democratic-republican power structure.

Re: Re:

Actually, the current candidates see the EFF as part of the public. They can an should "waste" resources on that fight. And I don't think they should endorse any candidate directly or they'll fall in that partisan idiocy that seems to drive a large portion of the Americans. Maybe mention good moves by both Democrats and Republicans and giving those good moves good publicity would be more effective.

@anonymous coward

I agree with your point. It's vitally important how we marshall our resources to respond to this massive surveillance that is rapidly being transformed into a "new normal" by "legalizing the illegal." Important not to waste our energy and time on a Congress that is virtually useless, esp since CU, and we DO need to develop parallel alternative political systems -- and fast. I worked on Jill Stein's campaign last year but commercial newsmedia largely ignored her and other third parties so they had a snowflake's chance because the public never heard of them, a simple way to control the public via newsmedia strangulation of information to maintain the two-party system (really one corporate party with two heads). Developing our own non-commercial newsmedia for dissemination of public information is vital, multiplying Democracy Now (for example), and greatly expanding public access TV with strong news programming like DN to educate the public. We know all this but must figure a way to act on it.

Meanwhile, what do we mean by "privacy"? The term doesn't describe (to my satisfaction) the secret spying on communications that can lead to pre-emption of resistant action and suppression of protest in advance by shutting down groups. There's bedroom privacy, there are personal conversations, there's keeping my bank balance or medical records private, etc, and then there is the "privacy" of protesters' planning, to protect their planning from being pre-empted as soon as known by the police/military/corporate opposition. "Terrorists" are being substituted for "protesters" in the public mind. Mil-intel and police can surveil the phone and email exchanges and plans of protest/resistance groups and pre-empt their actions. Yet few in the press or on blogs are discussing this dimension of the corporate/NSA surveillance threat that can exercise control and pre-emptive suppression like the old Soviet Union or the old Third Reich. Why not?

Re:

No reason needed

"... we're still waiting for someone (anyone?) to tell us exactly why this bill is needed... "
Because none of your business. WE will tell you what is necessary and appropriate to keep you safe. Don't worry your pretty little head.
Sincerely, Your Government

just a couple of random, harmless thoughts

"All of these, however, raise serious concerns about why Senators McCain and Huchison seem so eager to allow the NSA to abuse your privacy even more with their amendments. What are they thinking?"

Because they're fucking scared. Pathetically fucking scared. And they want you to be just as scared, and, for the most part, they're doing a fantastic fucking job of it aren't they? Bogey-man this, bogey-man that, but, but really, there are THREATS!. No shit? No. There are threats and then there is fundamentalist bullshit.

How about some god damn preparation, training, education and readiness?

My government is already far, far too powerful and my representatives are far, far too old, too rich and/or too self-serving to give two shits about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights much less adequately represent.

Protection! Security! How about you fuck the fuck off and let somebody blow my ass up and THEN tell me or any of my relatives that happened to miss the blast I told you so because I really, really do not want to have to "I told you so" about this overwhelmingly clear and consistent march towards fascism and the role reversal of serving government whims, tricks and treats.

Re: Do we have a third alternative?

If corporations are themselves doing extensive data collection and peering into all aspects of our lives (e.g., location, purchasing, browsing, health, relationships), they don't have much credibility in my eyes.

Like I said, if it comes down to government versus corporations, I pick neither.